Coming Through the Rye

by Link Worshiper

A lonely and depressed Heero has found his way back to school, unsure of what point life has for him anymore now that Duo has vanished into thin air. But then an odd Preventers agent who knows way more than she should about Duo crashes into his life. 1x2

10. Honestly

Coming Through the Rye

By Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

~ Part X ~

Honestly

That night, Heero tossed and turned in the throws of a violent nightmare. He recounted for the infinite time the incident where he murdered an entire colony sector of civilians in a freak accident. That stupid little girl who would not leave him alone haunted his mind once again, even now that there was harmony for the world. He could see her dancing merrily through a cliff-side field of rye stalks with her dog, precariously close to that hazardous ledge. He wanted to catch her, vowing that he would sit in that field of rye until he dropped dead as so she would not skip to her end over that cliff that plummeted into the world of adulthood and lost innocence. Suddenly, the girl's form began to change, and soon, flouncing through the fields in her place was Relena, still wearing the poor girl's broad brimmed hat and sundress. She still represented that innocence to him, an innocence he had lost a long time ago and an innocence that he had stolen from one harmless little girl and her dog and had been manifested in the body of another.

When Heero's eyes slid halfway open the next day, he thought he was still lost in his dreams. He was not surrounded by the familiar melancholy drab of his attic dormitory with its sad greys and blues strung through the air in heavy-hearted shadows. Replacing that bland setting was a glittering array of bright reds, royal purples, elfin green and shimmering gold. Vision focusing, he realized that he had fallen asleep on the floor of the costume loft where he and Hoshi had been holding their evening conversation the night before. He did not remember falling asleep there, or falling asleep at all for that matter, his mind the drowsy soup of someone who had been up too late drinking his miseries away. Sitting up, leaning his weight backward onto his elbows, he found himself cushioned from the wooden floor by a plump gown made of a very soft silky fabric hued the colour of a dragonfly's wings. A velvet blue Renaissance era cape was draped liberally over his body as if to keep him warm, and he wondered for a moment if it had been Hoshi who had seen to his comfort before disappearing for her own room the night before. His brown school loafers had been set neatly beside the makeshift bed, each of his socks balled up and stuffed into a separate shoe and his slender black necktie lying elegantly folded atop them. He vaguely registered the sound of a low voice singing gently in the darkness. For a few moments, it sounded like the song he used to sing to comfort Duo during the old war days, but soon realized that he was wrong. He contented himself to feign sleep for a few seconds longer and just listen.

"I believe.
I believe.
I believe.
I believe the love you talk about with me.
Is it true? Do I care?
Honestly, you can try and wipe the memories aside,
But it's you that you erase."

"You have a good rest there, Sleeping Beauty?" The voice fell from its song and spoke up in a normal tone. He twisted around to see Hoshi sitting at the top of the spiral staircase, feet resting on the second to top step. Her long brown hair was tied up in a flowing ponytail and facial features were illuminated in the eerie glow of the black light bulb screwed into the low ceiling beside the stairs. Mingled with the soft pinkish coral hue the rising sun painted the room with, the light proved to create a very ethereal vision. "Sorry," she shrugged, in reference to her singing, "Someone had their stereo up really loud last night. At least they were playing a song I like."

Heero was not very taken with the title he had been addressed with but nevertheless managed to nod quietly as he crawled over to where Hoshi sat, settling down on his knees beside her. "Domo… arigato," he mumbled after a pause, unsure of what else to say.

"Oh for that?" she gestured towards the gown and the cape with a jerk of her thumb, still lying strewn across the floor, wrinkled and unkempt. "Anytime sweetheart."

Heero frowned slightly once again with the name he had been given, but chose not to make a big deal about it. His mind soon wandered back to Duo, as it tended to more often than not, and the way he used to call him affectionately with the pet name Hee-chan. At first it had been a little annoying since Duo seemed to like the name quite a bit and used it as often as possible, never mind who or what was around them. After a while he came to realize that it was a blushing embarrassment that made him uneasy about the name. It had not been so much the actual name but the crimson shade that his cheeks would take on whenever Duo beckoned him with the pseudonym. And being as self-conscience as he was around Duo, Heero tried to avoid that beat red heat in his skin by ignoring the name. That was, until he came to realize that the name was just one of Duo's many ways of showing his fondness of him. After that he never gave it another thought and answered it as easily as he would just plain Heero. It was only the sound of Hoshi singing again that brought Heero hurtling back towards reality and landing with a bang.

"'Cause there's no place that I could be without you.
It's too far to discard the life I once knew.
Honestly, all the weather and the storms I bring,
Are just a picture of my needs.
'Cause when I think of you as mine,
And allow myself with time,
To lead into the life we want,
I feel love, honestly.
I feel love, yes, honestly."

"What time is it?" Heero asked at last, tearing himself from the inner confines of his mind and came plummeting back to reality. His mind was still rebooting itself from its hibernation mode.

"About one in the afternoon," Hoshi said mildly, glancing at the black digital watch that adorned her left wrist. "You sure like your beauty rest, kid."

"One it the afternoon!" Heero exclaimed, completely shocked out of his mind. "I've never slept that late in my entire life!" He bowed his forehead and caught his face in his hands, shaking slightly. "I must be getting more and more out of it every day. My internal clock can't even wake me up on time anymore."

"Why do you care? It's a Saturday," Hoshi waved it off. "That's what Saturdays are for. It's weird to wake up any earlier than midday on the weekend. Come on, it's not like you have anything important to do today anyway."

"Are they not having a seminar today?" Heero asked her dubiously. "I thought everyone was supposed to attend."

"So that's this weekend," Hoshi murmured, a pensive look crossing her face. It reminded Heero of the way Duo would look when he was concentrating on something really hard. "Huh, I'd totally forgotten. Oh well, it's not like I care. I wasn't planning to go."

"Why?" Heero asked, unable to think of a reason why she should be so adamant in not going.

"Why not?" she retorted with a shrug. "I just don't feel like going. It's on war and peace or something. All stuff we've heard six thousand times before. Besides, I don't think I can sit and listen to some speaker drone on for an hour and a half on the matter. My attention span is too short."

Heero chuckled slightly, a vision of the very attention deficit Duo waltzing around his head. "I can't believe they're willing to waste an entire weekend on something like that. You're right; everyone has heard the same things about peace six thousand times before." A dark look crossed his face, painted blue by the black light overhead, a shadow settling over his eyes and obscuring them behind his bangs. "The war is over; why does the world have to keep digging it up and dwelling upon it. I never want to hear about war ever again."

"True," Hoshi agreed. "So we'll just stake it out here until they're done in there. They don't even take attendance for big student functions like this anyway, so I don't know how they can get off saying that there will be consequences for anyone who breaks the rules."

"It's only breaking the rules if you get caught," Heero said smugly, a smirk pulling at his lips. "Duo always used to say that to justify his stealing. I hate to admit it, but the boy was a total kleptomaniac. He was damn good at it though."

"True again," Hoshi nodded, folding her arms over her lap and leaning forward. "He always bragged that he could steal the buttons off your coat. I don't know if he was that good—"

"Oh but he was," Heero interrupted. A small laugh escaped him as he leaned his cheek in one palm. "I would know. He stole the buttons off my jacket… while I was wearing the damn thing too!"

Hoshi laughed out loud, smacking her knee. "Oh smooth Heero, smooth. I bet you were too distracted by his ass to pay attention to what his hands were doing…. Oh God, I had no idea anyone could turn that dark a red!"

Heero wound around in the other direction quickly, not wanting Hoshi to see how his one weakness made him feel. He felt Hoshi give him a playful punch on the shoulder, catching him totally off guard and sending him toppling over in a heap on his side, much to his companion's amusement. She picked up her tune again and proceeded to ignore Heero's presence.

"I believe you mean the best that life can bring.
I believe in it all.
Honestly, you can try.
Your heart is just as long as mine.
Is it ours to let go?"

Picking himself up and dusting away at some imaginary smudge on his sleeve, he crawled back over to the forgotten cape and gown to hang them back up, their state of disarray nagging his obsessive-compulsive nature, all to the sound of Hoshi's continuing whimsical giggles.

Relena Darlian sat nervously on a metal folding chair that was situated on the school's stage beside a podium, watching eagerly as the students began to file into the auditorium for her lecture as she shuffled through her note-cards for what seemed the zillionth time. She had been on a campaign to promote her total pacifism to the Alliance's youth, travelling around from school to school for lectures and seminars across the Earth and high amongst the stars of the colony clusters above. Though she felt it was absolutely essential for the next generation to understand what needed to be done to further and keep the peace that so many had died to attain, there was an ulterior motive to all her moving around.

After the last skirmish with the Barton Foundation, Heero had disappeared yet again without so much as even a goodbye this time. She was determined to find out where he had hidden himself away and bring him the happiness she always knew he deserved, feeling that what he needed most was a place where he could be catered to and cared for until the day he died. A place where she could always be with him and watch him as they grew old together. But, in typical Heero Yuy fashion, he had disintegrated without so much as a trace. In a world of slinking assassins and soldiers, Heero was king. That boy could cover his tracks like no other and she was sure the only person in the entire universe who was possible better at staying hidden was that little thief who had stolen Heero's heart: Duo Maxwell.

So she had begun her travels around the world and the colonies in search of a clue as to where Heero might have gone. She spoke at schools, big corporations, small-town businesses, anywhere she could find a way into, she went. And every corner she turned, she was always searching for the only boy in the universe who had told her no, the boy she was still obsessed with, even after she had learned that he had given his love away to another.

But despite knowing that Heero had fallen fast and hard for someone else did not deter her from her dreaming. She was still convinced that her knight would give her the storybook ending she longed for so desperately if only she could get him alone in a room with her long enough to tell him what he needed to finally be happy after so long and arduous a fight.

The auditorium was slowly filling up, the dull clamour of the students already there, rising up in the air. She scanned each and every face for sight of a certain head of chocolate hair and exotic oriental blue eyes, but found no one who even closely resembled the object of her obsession. This school was yet another of thousands, the numbers and the names growing far too innumerable for even her to keep track of anymore. Every time she was about to give up hope, she told her self, "Maybe the next one, maybe the next one," and persevered. Anyone would have to admire the former queen's tenacity, even if it was geared in the wrong direction. She was a woman who liked to have her way, and would fight until things were in order the way she liked. That included changing the impassive and stony face of Heero Yuy to one that looked upon her lovingly, and not just as a mysterious protector who leapt out of the shadows whenever she and the world was endangered.

A quick glance at the dainty gold and leather wristwatch that adorned her hand, she found that she still had a few minutes before the seminar was to begin. Deciding to give her tired legs a stretch, she stood and wandered off into the wings, contenting herself with exploring the backstage area until she was needed. At the end of a short corridor off stage right was a tall iron spiral staircase that wound up into the eaves of the school. Wondering what was up there, she walked down the hall towards the mysterious coil of steps. As she drew nearer, she heard the sound of a low laugh tumbling down from the dark eaves above. Pausing at the bottom of the twisting stair, she looked up and was met with the dull glowing of an illuminated black light that cast its purplish ruddiness over the crest of the staircase. She was able to make out the form of two gangly muscled legs and the narrow vaguely familiar silhouette of a tall person with long hair. In the half-light, she could see the odd luminosity casting streaks of blue across the person's chestnut coloured hair and highlighting the curves of a round face with bright eyes, a pert nose and a wide grin. Whoever it was, was sitting up there, talking—no, singing—to another person that was totally hidden by her vantage point and the darkness that radiated from the little loft.

"'Cause there's no place that I could be without you.
It's too dark to discard the life I once knew.
Honestly, a single wrong is not enough,
To cover up the pain in us.
'Cause when I think of you as mine,
And allow myself the time,
To lead into the life we want,
I feel love, honestly.

"I'll make a joke so you must laugh.
I'll break your heart so you must ask,
'Is this the way to get us back?'
I don't know, honestly.
I don't know, yes, honestly."

And then she felt her blood boil and her face screw up as she stomped up the first couple steps, shouting in an irate tone. "Duo Maxwell!" The person sitting at the peak of the steps heard her cry and whipped around immediately in reaction to the name. "Duo Maxwell," she shouted again, "I know that's you up there! Come on, out with you! I want you to tell me where you've been hiding Heero all these years you queer little slut!"

When she finally reached the top of the stairs, she was met with a very surprising scene. Sitting there was not Duo Maxwell at all, but a tall well-built girl who very much resembled her much-hated rival. Her hair was long and coloured like Duo's and her eyes the same shade of bluish purple, but she held the form of a girl, with curvy hips and a feminine chest. She cocked her head and made a strange face, saying to Relena in a cheerful tone, "Nope, Maxwell's not here right now. Can I take a message?"

"I… I…. Oh dear, I'm so sorry," Relena was wringing her hands frantically in mortification. "I hope I didn't offend you Miss… Miss…."

"Hoshi," the girl interjected. "My name is Hoshi."

"…. Miss Hoshi, then. I… err… thought you were someone…." She trailed off, noticing for the first time, the outline of another body, curled up in the shadows behind the female Duo. Her eyes first fell upon a pair of callused bare feet sticking out into the light, tracing up the strong calves and over the iron thighs shrouded in the drab dark blue uniform pants of the school. Eyes still climbing, now excitedly scrambling up the torso wrapped in brisk white cotton, ascending the long swan-like neck. Her vision curved over the perfect chin and pale rosy lips, across the arch of his nose and finally meeting a pair of frosty blue glass eyes, smoldering with a cold flame behind a thick fringe of shaggy mahogany bangs. She sucked in a hitched breath and let out a sigh. "Heero…."

He seemed to barely notice her, his eyes flicking quickly over Hoshi's shoulder to regard her before returning to his pensive staring at the black wall ahead of him, not even mouthing a word to her.

Hoshi killed the deathly silence with a clap of her hands and a cheerful word. "Oh Heero, do you know her?"

"We've met," he growled softly. He did not dislike Relena herself. As with the rest of the world, he admired her as a symbol of peace and felt gravitated towards her to protect her and her dream for a future devoid of fighting. His desire to keep Relena safe from harm was even more so because she resembled an innocent little child, who he slaughtered with his carelessness, stealing forever a life that would never be. She might even be considered a friend if it were not for her bigotry against poor Duo. What bothered him was her unhealthy fixation upon him and her unnatural dislike for Duo. He knew the only real reason she hated him was because Heero preferred his company to hers, slept with him as a lover and treasured him as a best friend. She resented that he had chosen Duo instead of her and hated him because he was the one that Heero loved.

"Oh more than just met," Relena said ambiguously, hoping that she would lead Hoshi down a wrong path of assumption about the past that she and Heero shared.

"Oh yeah?" Hoshi said, sounding intrigued. "Tell me more."

"Well we were very close during the old war days," Relena began, only to be cut off by a frustrated Heero. It was things like this that made him want to beat the girl into a bloody pulp.

"Relena, we were friends during the war," Heero snapped from his spot in the dim gloominess. "You were a leader and the other pilots and myself were your soldiers who shared in your dream. Don't try to paint our friendship up to be more than it is, or else you won't have a friendship to fancy up at all!"

"Oh, you're Relena Peacecraft! I just knew I recognized that face from somewhere!" Hoshi exclaimed, jumping to her feet, she sidled down a few steps to meet Relena on the same stair and shook her hand excitedly. "It's a great honour to meet you, Ma'am! What are you doing here?"

"I'm giving the seminar here today," she explained, a little surprised by Hoshi's outgoing personality. She eyed her suspiciously, taking in her appearance in greater detail. She was distressed to find many qualities about this girl that were shared by one Duo Maxwell, and was frustrated further to think that this was the kind of person that Heero seemed to be naturally drawn to. Like Duo, she carried that rocker-punk style with the slightest Goth flair. Her eyes were lined with dark makeup and her lips painted a dark violet hue. She wore a few silver rings in each ear, her wrists adorned with a great collection of jangling bracelets and her clothes black and baggy. She was everything in a person that Relena knew she could never hope to be like, even if she tried to pretend for the sake of appearances. And it angered her to think that Heero did not seem to be attracted to the clean-cut upper echelons of society, the type she felt he should be. "Can I ask what you and Heero were doing up here all alone?"

"Escaping the expected convention that society is pressing upon us," Hoshi spewed out eloquently with a wave of her hand as she reassumed her spot at the crown of the stairs, bending forward to rest her elbows on her knees. "We cannot be expected to be consistent with and meld in with the masses and still call ourselves individuals! By rebelling against conformity we assert ourselves in our own unique niche that illustrates us in our own distinctive way!"

Relena blinked a couple times, completely shocked by this short passionate speech that damned traditionalism. She still seemed to doubt the truth to Hoshi's word and looked to Heero for at least a nod of assent. He did not even notice her eyes upon him, his own gaze still riveted upon the blank sloping wall ahead of him, lost in deep thought about a lover long lost and long missed. Here she had been searching space and Earth alike for Heero and now that she had found him, he would not even glance at her. She was just about to speak again when she noticed Heero slump sideways leaning comfortably on Hoshi's curved back as he continued brooding over his mystery. She could not even hope to fathom what was racing through his mind right then, but that image of him so contented with this girl was starting to drill holes in her head. It only made it worse that Hoshi reminded her so of Duo. Her words were replaced by a very muted glare of discontent.

"Aw, Heero, you're still so sleepy," Hoshi murmured, reaching over her shoulder to ruffle Heero's mop of chocolate brown hair. "You push yourself way too hard nowadays and yet at the same time, you are wasting away."

Relena's frown deepened. The only time she had ever been able to touch Heero's hair was the one time when he had fainted dead away after the Mariemaia fiasco, saving him from a brutal fall to the floor. And then he had been unconscious, unable to tell her to go on petting his hair or to get the hell away. But he was perfectly willing to support himself on this girl's back and let her play with his bangs like it was the most natural thing in the world. The only thing that made her blood curdle more was seeing Duo touching and kissing Heero. And thank God she had only walked in on that once! What a jarring shock it had been to turn a corner to find Heero holding Duo against the wall, ravishing his lips passionately. That just crowned all the little hints that had been piling up for months and years, practically slicing her dreams of being with Heero to ribbons. But ever the obstinate one, she never did give up hope that she might one day make Heero her own.

"Is he alright?" Relena asked, noticing how dreary Heero seemed. Maybe it was just fatigue setting in and he was too out of it to notice what he was doing or that Hoshi was playing with his hair, just as it had been with her.

"He's been going through a lot," Hoshi explained. "After years of living off barely enough to keep him alive for the next day, it's all finally starting to catch up with him. He's exhausted."

"What he needs is to get out of here," Relena exclaimed, daring to advance up the stairs a little. "This boarding school life where no one is around to care for him will never do! After I give this seminar, I will bring him home with me to Earth and he can start over and have a new life. I will help him recover what he lost."

"You would bring Duo to him?" Hoshi queried slyly, watching Relena carefully. She noticed the way her eyes flashed with fire at the mere mention of the American pickpocket. "He is waiting for Duo here. He will be okay for the rest of the school year at least. He has friends who can watch him and take care of him. But most of all, Duo is coming home to him soon, and stealing him away from this place would only put more miles between them. Neither of them should have to travel any more long roads. Both their feet are weary and dusty with the long journey."

"What does Duo have to do with anything?" Relena snapped, perhaps a little too tartly, for Heero's head snapped up and his eyes glowered with a burning intensity that forced Relena down a step.

"Well you said that you would recover for Heero what he lost," Hoshi clarified. "And what Heero lost was Duo. So I assumed what you meant was that you'd bring Duo to Heero."

"Well what I meant was that I would provide and care for Heero until he grew old and died peacefully in his bed," she retorted, running her hands beneath the dark golden brown braids that were twined around her head, speaking for Heero as if he were not even in the same room as them. "He shouldn't have to be at a place like this where he's left to fend for himself. He deserves to be loved."

"You're right, he does," Hoshi said. "Which is why he should stay here to wait for his lover with his friends who care for him!"

"No! He needs to be with someone who can really take care of him! I can offer him everything he could ever need in life," Relena protested, gripping the iron railing tightly. "And I love him so much, I would dedicate my life to make sure he is happy forever! I'm sure he could learn to love me too!"

"What gives you the idea that he could replace Duo with you?" Hoshi asked. "He's told you 'No!' Do you get that no means no! Or maybe you don't, coming from a world of 'Yes'? He doesn't love you!"

"I'm sure there are feelings there that he has yet to unearth," Relena said defiantly with a little stomp of her foot. Suddenly, she felt her mouth moving, voicing thoughts that she would have rather liked to keep in the safe confines of her head. "It's just been that gay Maxwell boy poisoning Heero with wrong ideas of what love is!"

Heero's eyes were sharp like daggers then, and he was practically climbing over Hoshi to get at Relena and tear her heart out. He would be damned if he would allow her to say such things about Duo just because she was the Queen of the World! He did not give a rat's ass whoever the hell she was. No one talked about Duo, claimed to know the truth of his own heart and got away with it. Nobody!

"Oh, so loving a person unconditionally, no matter if that person is the same sex, poor, or whatever, is not love?" Hoshi arched her eyebrow at Relena, one hand reaching back to settle Heero back down. She could feel him growing tenser with anger with every second. "Sorry, I'm just a little confused here. So if you wouldn't mind clarifying for me what you meant…."

"Heero must love me! Why, I still even have that teddy he gave me years ago after the first war before he went away!" She was practically crying, throwing a hand over her breast in desperation to have her point made. "Maxwell was a whore out for a pretty body to screw. God, how do you think I felt, knowing that he's been making you do it dirty in every dark corner and shabby school dormitory he could ever get you alone in? He didn't love Heero! Not the way I do!"

"You're right, you don't love me the way he does. You could never hope to even begin to fathom how Duo loves me," Heero interjected, a hand tightening on Hoshi's shoulder as silently asking for her support. "Duo loves me because I'm me, not because I'm the invincible Heero Yuy or because I'm the one who supposedly saved the world. You don't understand me. You could never hope to understand me. What you don't understand, you cannot possibly hope to posses."

"Then why did you give me that teddy? Did it mean nothing then?" She sounded offended.

"It means more than you could even dare to dream," Heero snarled, his fingers digging into Hoshi's shoulder, though she seemed to busy eyeing Relena to pay the throbbing pain any mind. "I was returning that bear to the soul of a poor little girl whose innocence I burned like rubbish during a failed mission. When I first saw you, I could have sworn that I had seen that little girl reborn and all grown up. I wanted to give back to her what the war so heartlessly stole away from her. I had to pay dearly to return that to her. Or do you not remember what I wrote in that note you were so quick at tearing just to show me up?"

"So I everything we had. All those dreams were just some guilt trip?!" Relena exclaimed in a sudden burst of anger and passion. She could not imagine that this was the true face of Heero's so-called feelings for her.

"Harsh word choice, Miss Relena," Hoshi commented smugly. "I guess you still are the same little girl Heero once knew. He should remember not to try and make symbolic points to you anymore. It doesn't seem to do anything."

"No one asked you!" she frowned in Hoshi's direction, finding more and more reasons by the second as to why she should dislike the girl.

"Well I'm telling you my opinion anyway!" Hoshi retorted with that same smug tone. She could hear Heero laughing softly in her ear. "No one ever got their beliefs heard by sitting quiet and waiting for someone to call on them like some damn council meeting! You have to take action if you want to mold your own future! Even the longest journeys begin with one small step, Miss Relena! You should be able to understand at least that!"

"Stop trying to change the subject," she commanded in her official tone. She was about to go on and smash Hoshi's ego to pieces when a voice shouted out from the bottom of the stairs, calling out her name. She peered over the rail to see a red-haired girl with glasses and freckles, calling up to her and waving. "What is it?"

"We've been looking for you, Ma'am!" Sora shouted out, cupping both sides of her mouth with her hands. "They want you to begin the seminar. What have you been doing all this time?"

Relena sent a longing glance back at Heero, who chose to melt back into the shadows just then, before calling back down. "I'll be there in a moment. I'm sorry…. I just was catching up with an old… an old friend…." She smiled half-heartedly at Heero and Hoshi, her face almost nostalgic as she turned about and slowly descended the winding staircase, back down to earth.

"Well that certainly was strange and ironic," Hoshi assessed, leaning back onto the wall beside Heero, patting his knee. "Who'd have been thinking that the school would get her of all people as a spokesperson and that she'd come wandering around here just to find you?"

"It's sort of frustrating," Heero mumbled, staring off into space blankly. He was shaken from his inner thoughts most roughly when Sora's voice echoed up the stairs once again. The noise that fell from his lips sounded like that of a man who had been roused from a very tempting and luscious dream.

"Hey, have either of you two geniuses seen D.B.?" Sora called up to them as Relena started to walk onstage to the sound of loud applause. Her question fell upon two sets of ears, one listening acutely, the other hearing the words like drivel slurred together in some unknown tongue.

"I have no idea where he is!" Hoshi answered her friend, sliding back over to the top of the stairs and peeking through the iron bars that supported the railing. "I thought he was helping you!"

"He was supposed to," Sora explained, an annoyed expression apparent on her cute girlish features, "but the bugger's slinked off somewhere and I can't tell where's he's gone for the life of me! I swear, when I find him, I'll wring his neck for ditching me with Miss Snooty Pacifist herself! I was hoping he had gone off with you and Heero."

The rare melodious sound of Heero's somewhat nasal baritone lilted through the costume attic and toppled down the steps to Sora's surprised ears. The sound of Heero actually laughing brought a smile to her face and her anger towards the lackadaisical D.B. was soon forgotten.

"Want me to go look for him?" Hoshi asked, getting to her feet and beginning down towards Sora. Heero positioned himself at the top of the stairs, lying flat on his belly, chin pillowed by the interlaced mesh of his fingers as he peered downwards to where his two female friends were striking up an animated conversation about where D.B. might have gone off to. He was not so sure why Sora was making such a big fuss over it. D.B. probably had some perfectly logical explanation for ditching the lecture and Heero could find himself justifying even the most lame of excuses to rationalize not wanting to be there. Then again, he found himself thinking, when you really like someone, you find yourself worried about them all the time, even when there's nothing to be worried about at all. He remembered becoming fretful about Duo's whereabouts every second the chestnut haired American was not with him. Even then, he pained himself to think where and what Duo was doing at that very moment….

Relena was well into her lecture, half the student body keenly interesting in what she had to say, the other half zoned out and bored to sleep. Duo had managed to find himself a prime spot to watch the whole thing from one of the air ducts that stretched out over the audience, deciding that if someone so important was going to be hanging around, it was probably a good idea to make sure nothing got out of hand. Legs dangling over the side of the metallic platform, he kept a keen eye out on the crowd below him. He had changed into his uniform black and found no problems at all sneaking backstage and up into the eaves over the stage. Knowing that Heero was still camping out in the costume loft, he had to go an alternate route to get up to the catwalks. Scaling the slender ladder off in the wings, he had made his way across the dark upper regions of the stage and wriggled his way easily into one of the narrow shafts. Now lying on his stomach, he kept one watchful eye on Relena, another on the criminal suspect sitting in the fourth row, first seat on the right. Hopefully, he would not try to make a move on Relena. Otherwise, things might get messy for both Duo and his dear Heero.

"There's no place that I could be without you, honestly." The tune he was singing quietly to himself had come into his head sometime during that day, and he was not quite sure where he had heard it. He was thinking it was probably playing on the radio when he had not even been aware and the tune had just gotten stuck in his head. Music tended to do that to him. "No place I could be without you, no place I could be without you, no place I could be without you honestly…."

"Oh come on, Relena," Duo moaned at long last. "Hurry it up already! You've been yapping for a good hour already. I want to get a nap in before this day is out!"

Suddenly, a movement from below caught Duo's attention. His suspected ex-Ozzie was rising from his seat and slowly making his way for the back of the auditorium. "Damn scumbag," Duo muttered under his breath as he started to shimmy down the duct, silent as you please, to tail the unpredictable and dangerous Professor Cawdor.

A/N ~ The song Honestly belongs to Billy Corgan's new band, ZWAN.

Hehe, but more importantly, I'm so excited to be posting today! After staying up to midnight and beating my way through an army of 10 year-olds with a witch's cap and a broomstick, I got my mits on the new Harry Potter book! Bet there's going to be lots of magic and chaos happening in the Harry Potter section and on SugarQuill.net today!

Man, I cannot even begin to tell you how long I have been waiting for this bloody thing to come out! All I gotta say after waiting two years for it is: IT HAD BETTER BE GOOD!...Aw, who am I kidding? Of course it will be! I heard she kills off a big character and part of the reason it took so long was because she had so much trouble writing this character's death because he was so beloved! *sniffles* I hope it's not Sirius Black or Lupin... or... Dumbledore *eep!*, though I have nasty feeling it probably is.... :( Ah! I've said too much! Must... get... reading!